What a scattered mess this one's gonna be!

For old times sake I wanted to find the oldest video I could where i recorded dev on SeaCrit, 4 years ago!

4 years! WHERE DOES THE TIME GO!? Didn't think i'd see myself coding in it, didn't realize i've been tweaking the nuts and bolts of the mechanics of SeaCrit for so long. And it's kind of a bummer, because I wanted to see the game look worse, with crappy animations, crappy particles, a lot less features. But the game really hasn't changed all that much in 4 years! What the heck have I even been doing!? It arguably has a lot more interesting visuals, but the game today runs on phones and is far more performant, so concessions are made.

I need to remind myself, the devil is in the details, I could go on for hours talking about how little things have changed, how i've restructured the scene, how i've made small animation tweaks, how the upgrade system is changed, shops, AI and on and on and on.

When you look at a game, it's not just small elements that evolve and become better, the absolute core of how you approach things change in a multitude of ways. In short, the game doesn't get better, you do. All those years of beating your head against the wall thinking you're making the game better, your'e not, you're just figuring out how to do things the right way the hard way. Learning how to make these techicnical toys in a way that allows for ongoing development, to build things that aren't going to break everything else, and can be modified in the future to be fun and not too much of a headache. 

It's not just code that you look back on and wonder, What was I thinking!? It's naming conventions, it's scene layouts, it's folder structures, it's level design, it's design decisions. Everything in every way connects to one another, and as you get better, though it may not look like it on the surface, every aspect of your project becomes more battle tested and less prone to falling apart.

Getting better at gamedev isn't about building things that are just more fun, or more fantastic, it's about learning how to build things that are built to last.

OK! TANGENT TIME!

I ramble about the world, and how I try to understand why things are as they are and when I was younger, I would try to understand people, understand the nature of leaders and followers, try to understand the nature of things.

But the world is not so simple, to try to come to any understanding of why things are as they are, you have to understand change, and rates of change. Sort of a social calculous. No era of history can give you any understanding of the madness of the day, it's predicated on a long chain of events that struck that country, the social norms, the emerging social structures of power, what drives a people to put their life on the line for great change or to serve thier fellow man, or what sort of declines may follow when we lose this burning passion for the world around us.

We came from hard times, the beggar today lives better than kings before. Tasty food, shelter, clothing, mind altering chemicals, virtue, participation trophies, we hand these out for free these days. And as the decline sets in, as the hard fought virtues of honor, principle, truth fall to the wayside as weak jokers, back scratchers, fair-weather friends, and brown nosers ascend to the highest echelons of power, madness grips our world. You no longer have the satisfaction of reaping the rewards of the hard fought day's work, the back scratching virtue wh*re makes more money, commands more influence, looks down on those writhing in the muck trying to hold onto antiquated realities of social contracts.

Social engineering is the name of the game today. Start with an assertion, justify it later. We are right, we are good, we are saving humanity from itself, we are the cure to their poison. Assign the mantles and justify the self serving hierarchy of power later. The only truth that matters to most is the one shrink wrapped and beamed through the screen. That's the one that affirms all the self fulfilling notions, the one that demonizes the other, the one that defends the wicked machine from accountability, and having to look at itself in the mirror. It's convoluted and complex enough that none can fully refute it, and it is our nature to gaslight and justify our own crusades.

In such a complex web of institutions ranging from tech giants, to social influence, to politics, to industry, they all go to the same swanky parties, they all lift one another up, they all insulate and require the same kissing of ring for a seat at the table. And year after year the façade is maintained in our open secret of social engineering. Accountability is bad. Hard work is bad. Necessitating talent is bad. We're all the same, we're all wonderful, we're all great, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a vile stain on this world, the spoiled narcissists will tell you who inherited the keys to the kingdom from a greater generation to insulate themselves with others who sell their souls to the vile notions.

Wasn't expecting to have a ramble like this, but so it goes. After all these years, still disgruntled by all this sh*t as most sat and watched from the comfort of the dissonances.

Everybody knows we're in decline, they look to their left, to their right, they see the jokers, they know the standards have fallen, they know everyone has knives at each others throats. But they dare not say anything, dare not risk the comfy seat at the table as the walls burn in. It may be fire and brimstone closing in from the inside, but it's a barren void they've ostracized the other to they dare not suffer.

Oh well! Nothin' ta do but soldier on. Am I riddled by my own delusions of grandeur? Is the true secret that SeaCrit is a terrible, unfun mess? Doesn't really matter does it? All we can do in this crazy world of liars, judgers, crooks, and liars is roll our dice and hope for the best.

Hope that the culture of the day happens to be at the right rate of acceleration at the right time to give you that razor's edge chance for this terrible sh*tstain of an unfair world to give you the tiniest of chances despite our own dispositions to want to sh*t on one another.

There's a notion I've been thinking about a lot of late. I keep thinking about how when I was a child, I would watch full house, family matters, all that sappy garbage, and I would think "this is what a normal family is, this is average" and the people in my life paled in comparison. 

We don't put that safety warning on entertainment for idiots such as myself "This is fake, expectations for real life SHOULD vary."

The great visionaries of the past, they all saw through the bullsh*t. They didn't waste their time gigging on a couch watching sponge bob, they knew there was a real world, with harsh realities that required minds full of truth to maintain, there was a duty that those in charge know the nature of this world, have some dirt under their fingernails, but they told some white lies because life is brutal and cruel and most don't need to know the full truth of this dark world. Today the emperors with no clothes are preoccupied propagandizing the world how wonderous their robes are, they foist the mantles everywhere, everyone runs around like naked jackarses praising one another's fine linens with sh*t eating grin.

Fictions have their place, they can bring hope and joy to the downtrodden, but there's a sinister element to them. We can teach our children lies and false expectations. We can give people fake friends they've never met, and before you know it, everyone is huddeled in their caves looking at a screen thinking they're not as good as the reality on the screen a slave to this false, fake reality we've unloaded on one another as we disolve our responsibility to the coming generations. We're weak now, synthetic, liars and hypocrites afraid to face the truth of who we are in the face of this perfect reality we've set for ourselves.

Life was hard in the forties, great depressions, world wars, nuclear attacks, lead filled paint, child labor, famine, disease, death, abuse. That's where we came from, and we aspired for more, and for the longest time we attained it. Generation after generation we became more and more grateful and produced tools and social structure that brought more and more good from us. We knew the harsh truths of one another and there weren't so many damned phonies.

There is no absolute truth, everything we perceive from the most exacting maths to the most astronomical concepts of infinity, space, and time are riddled by personal biases, memories, and dissonances.

But in recent years, we've gone the route of Versailles, on a mass scale. The parasite of decadence has grown larger than the host of calloused hands, filled with dirt under its nails, who comes in exhausted from a long days work wondering if they've made enough to survive the long dark winter.

The lies we tell one another are no longer white lies to build one another up, they're contortions made in the dark to satiate sinful lusts among a privildged few.

Wasn't sure what the new years resolution was going to be at the beggining of this blog, but I suppose it's going to be a reaffirmation. What are we going to do this year?

We get to work fight this stupid, self-absorbed petulance. We make the best darned ret*rd fish simulator we possibly can, BECAUSE RET*RD FISH SIMULATORS ARE IMPORTANT DAMN IT! This year we keep the fire burnin' amidst all the smoke and mirror per usual. Here's to steady health and passions.

It can be a real kick in the balls to see everything fall to pieces, to see the people you respected fall one by one as the mass scales of madness taint us all. As the pious wage war on the growing outcasts. As everything you held dear goes to crap, and the world begins to worship its own decay, its smarm, its decadence, it's own self serving stupidity.

Good lord, so much time gone, so many good years squandered living in shame, seeing the world spin on without a care in the world as everything went to sh*t. It's disheartening as hell. No one cared, no one gave a sh*t so long as they were getting theirs.

In a weird way it builds resolve. Maybe SeaCrit is special, maybe all this hard work isn't for nothing.

We've been toiling away in squalor for countless days, with nothing to show for it, but these delusions and promise. While others built their gaudy castles in sand, we built a foundation, and maybe some time in the future, this world pulls its head out of its arse and seas value in that again. Maybe the era of the soft handed back scratchers and smarm f*cks is over.

DON'T MATTER ANYWAY!

All we can do is get back to work. The world may go even crazier, maybe we're hit by a meteor tomorrow. All there is to do at this point is stick to my guns and keep burnin' the midnight oil. Had a good little break, not feeling burned out, I feel vindicated as the world continues to go to sh*t under the stewardship of the legion of smarm f*cks who have squandered every single advantage year after year after year as the soft handed elites sit and spin on their massive mounds of self congratulation.

2023, can get f*cked.

Here's to the New Year. Here's hoping we finish strong. And you know what, it's ok if we're not feeling the best, if we aren't able to work at 100%, 14 hour days coffee fueled, because we've been busting our ass on this project year after years for a long solid chunk of time while everyone else jerked each other into the dust. We've got a damned solid base here to build on, we've got some life in us yet.

2024, Let's whip the Llama's ass

Let's get back to being serious. 2023 was simultaneously the best year and hardest year for SeaCrit. I'm a better dev now than I've ever been, getting better year on year, not impeded by the bullsh*t of the day either. But for reasons I've whined about in prior posts, it's been pretty damned tough and the future has lost a bit of its luster. Will we finish strong? Will we get at least 6 hour days ago where we end our session with some adrenaline going feelin' like we whooped some ass as the game gets better and better?

We will see. The burnout is gone and that's what matters. Gotta work through whatever painful distractions manifest.

Sick of the decline, sick of the weakness, sick of the bullshit, sick of this petulant, dog eat dog world that breeds the worst in us.